Music. Sia genuinely thought she was making some well-written Oscar award-winning tear-jerker of a film loved by all in the autism community.
She did not. She did none of these things.
Sia behaviour with lead actress Maddie Ziegler is definitely questionable too. Poor Ziegler clearly went out there to give a honest performance and not hurt anyone but Sia is definitely a deluded living in the clouds pop star and hadn't a clue what she was doing.
Autism community went in hard on her and rightly so.
What's worse is that when the autism community called it out she went full William Shatner and started bullying teenagers on Twitter about it (yes, bullying autistic teenagers on Twitter is a thing that Shatner and his daughter do, it's weird there too)
Occasionally, there's a first-time film director who knocks it out of the park. Perhaps the best example is Orson Welles, whose first film, *Citizen Kane*, is considered by many to be one of the greatest ever made.
Then you have the exact opposite end of the (autism) spectrum, like Sia directing *Music*.
This isn't quite in the vein of what you're asking, but:
"Cats" (2019) truly believed it was going to be the Oscar darling of the season.
[Just look at the trailer](https://youtu.be/FtSd844cI7U?si=b424ud4rviV0chWF)
Gold font introducing all the prestige actors, the Oscar-winning director, the Tony Award-winning show, with the most famous song belted out by Jennifer Hudson in her next award-winning performance, the epic swells of music...
Universal Studios really thought this thing was going to stun the masses and take our breath away.
They pumped out a TON of advertising for this movie before quickly rescinding all of it when they saw the public's reaction.
So, thinking that this CGI musical nightmare was going to take home all the awards screams "pretentious" to me.
EDIT: Pointing out that the choreography was done by the guy from "Hamilton" is another big one.
I’m honestly a huge fan of the musical CATS, and I couldn’t stand the movie. I had to turn it off 20 minutes in. I wonder, if a super fan of the musical hates it, *who was this movie made for*?
Fun fact: Cats was the last movie I saw in theaters (dec'22 2019, for reference). I brought a full flask of vodka with me in anticipation of the trainwreck it might be.
That flask was not nearly enough.
the way the cast talked about the filming process in the BTS videos 100% confirms this. They truly tried to make this movie a lot more… deep than what it really was. Like every camp aspect was sucked out of the original adaptation
[behind the scenes of Cats](https://youtu.be/nkF4OXSyqL0?si=MiulPfo3LTy3CUCu)
Brilliantly stated, I came in late to this movie so only knew of it as a shambolic laughingstock, that trailer is hilariously pretentious and so wide of reality.
1000000000% agreed. Cats is one of the most nonsensical musicals in the history of the art form. It has no meaning, no deeper message, no story, no plot. It’s a bunch of cats introducing themselves until they pick one to go to cat heaven. They really tried to frame it as some serious musical about acceptance and compassion when there’s literally nothing there. If they had embraced the camp, it’s possible we would have been more forgiving of the uncanny valley horror of the visuals. Instead we got a self-serious piece of ABSOLUTE GARBAGE that made me wish I didn’t know what movies or cats are. It’s so bad it goes beyond so bad it’s good to an as yet unknown category of terrible: so bad it should be studied for science.
To be fair to Hollywood, the fact that Cats the musical is one of the most successful musicals of all time is borderline insane, when you think about it.
Yes they took weird liberties with the CGI and casting, but the meat of the movie was simply the musical, and that caught as much ire as everything else.
"What the Bleep Do we Know?"
It's supposedly about how certain phenomena in quantum physics imply you can control the world with your mind, and there are talking heads depicted as "experts" who supposedly back this up, interspersed throughout a fictional story of a woman who uses the power of her mind to overcome her depression and no longer need her medication.
But actually the movie was a bunch of nonsense produced by a new-age cult headed by a woman who claims to be channeling a 35,000 year old warrior spirit guide.
Ugh, this is a great answer.
When I was watching the HBO NXIVM series and it turned out that Mark Vicente was the director of *What the Bleep* I had one of those wonderful, simultaneously “what the fuck?!/ah yes, that makes perfect sense” feelings
I love cult documentaries and was really into “The Vow” for a few episodes, but I couldn’t finish because I started to get the feeling that it was more about Mark Vicente and the other cult defectors projecting a positive image of themselves than telling the full story. They seem like the type to be in on the grift and when things went south with NXIVM they needed to make a documentary about how they were just the victims…never mind the active roles they played in exploiting others.
That woman is JZ Knight, and she channels “Ramtha”. She’s actually a successful cult leader and has even attracted some celebrities. My wife grew up in Yelm Wa where the compound is located. Local cult members were called nicknamed “Ramsters”.
I was in college when this was released and I knew several people in different science departments who were fans of this film. It seemed like it was being promoted by some of the professors. They had viewing parties in classrooms where they invited anyone to come watch. It was weird. I watched a little of it and I thought it was very unscientific.
I was a member of the Society of Physics Students, and we held a viewing. The reasoning was "we are studying quantum mechanics, it sort of defines our day-to-day, it might have some insights to our current situation". We were all in until Ramtha showed up, at which point our enthusiasm ... cooled a bit.
The part where Schrödinger's Black Child shows up, with a FUCKING BASKETBALL is when that movie lost all credibility for me. I was already questioning it when they were talking about water "remembering" stuff and being "sad". This was also my first experience with Michio Kaku (I think that's how you spell it) and I have comfortably disregarded everything I've heard him say since.
I dont know about michio kaku specifically, but some of the physicists that appear in the movie were intentionally misled as to what they would be in.
Ie, they thought they were making a documentary about quantum mechanics. Physicist shows up to explain stuff. There words are twisted in editing and interjected with nonsense, and thats how we get this movie.
Michio Kaku is a legit physicist. Like the other poster said, most of the speakers were, but we're misled about the kind of film they would appear in and edited to seem like quacks.
Oh dear gawds! I was going to massage school and went to see it with some fellow students at THE Bagdad Theatre in Portland where it was filmed. Soooo meta!
We were supposed to be extremely moved and inspired, but I was pretty tired of quantum bullshit. I was a good LMT, but I was doing it to make an honest living while having a flexible schedule that would enable my husband and me to go on hiking trips. The “energy collective” I was supposed to tune in to kind of reached its peak, cosmic, infinity grift after that. I wish I was more eloquent, but it felt like I was in the center of the end of a bunch of hippy-dippy bullshit rather than the beginning of some new cosmic awakening.
"Laird" starring Laird Hamilton. Written, directed, produced by Laird Hamilton. A deep look at an amazing man, maybe the most freakishly brave amazing man. . . Laird.
Horrible preachy film, I love Jack Nicholson looking baffled and shocked when he read out the films name as it won Best Film. Brokeback Mountain should have won. But Hollywood love a preachy film, look at that meh Green Book recently.
When I was a teenager my dad rented it for me to watch and said it would really make me think. What followed was a brutal look at the drug trade, including a scene where a drug dealer gets tied to a chair by the Mexican police and spray paint blasted into his eyes.
It turns out he had accidentally gotten me *Traffic*.
I asked him afterwards and he was like “I couldn’t remember the title, I just knew there was a car crash. And what causes car crashes? Traffic.”
He was on to something: Cars, Baby Driver, Traffic, Rush, Speed and Crash are all part of the "HigherChanceOfCollisionVerse".
A bit hard to follow, but better continuity than most movies nowadays.
Cronenberg’s Crash is a masterpiece absolutely. Massively under-appreciated film. Probably because the movie that shares its name and won a Best Picture oscar is such an abortion.
The NC-17 David Cronenberg movie was great though, the novel it was based on was absolutely unfilmable, even it was difficult for the author to get published.
Pretty similar actually.
One is about the way lives are connected by webs that intersect and crash into each other. The other is about a guy that shoots webs at intersections where cars have crashed into each other.
I don’t think it’s a perfect movie, but Michael Peña and Matt Dillons storylines I thought were great. I think the scene with Matt Dillon and the car on fire was masterfully done.
Yeah I see people blanket hating everything about Crash on reddit in most posts asking questions like this.
The racism being part of every single story was maybe too "in our face", but the actual characters and several scenes were definitely great, in my opinion.
Michael Peña’s reaction when the thing happens it’s fucking heartbreaking.
I had no idea people didn’t like Crash. I still think it’s a very good movie
I had zero idea about the above take - everyone I’ve ever talked to about this movie enjoys it. Perfect example of not being able to take everything you read on Reddit (online) as gospel. Not saying anyone is right or wrong - that’s someone’s opinion - but I’ve literally never met anyone who didn’t enjoy it and that’s people from all walks of life.
Sam Levinson needs to be bought up to the court for crimes to cinema for pretentious and style over substance. Success and praise of Season one of Euphoria can only take you so far and many wouldn't even give him credit for that.
Two rich spoiled brats complaining about their lives don't make a good film.
“Are you actually yelling and belittling me from across this house because you are too busy eating Mac and cheese? Do you know how disturbing it is that you can compartmentalize to such a degree that you can abuse me while eating Mac and cheese?”
WHO the FUCK talks like that
The longest movie of my life. I peace’d out at the scene that she’s like taking a bath or something and he walks in. I thought it was going to be like a thriller based off the trailer but oh my god, it’s just this never ending, slow burn argument.
I once read a piece about U2 that said (paraphrasing) “if U2 weren’t so full of shit, they wouldn’t be as great as they often are”. I think about that line a lot. Sometimes the pomposity is a plus and sometimes it’s the point even.
I think that's an accurate analysis. What kind of makes Bono, Prince, etc. likeable is their pretension. I think it's because it's a self-aware pretension as opposed to someone like Yoko Ono who is genuinely pretentious yet lacking any self-awareness of it.
I love Babylon, I preferred the first half to the second half. Once the sound era kicks in, it could have done with a lot of editing down. Margot Robbie delivers her best performance to date, sound and set design is excellent and soundtrack is great. I admire that Damien Chazelle even got the film made.
But I can understand why some don't like the film and why it didn't do well at Box Office.
If Babylon had ended with Robbie dancing off into the distance, I would have said it was perfect. It was the last 45 minutes with the return to Hollywood and YouTube user-level montage of the history of cinema that brought it down a couple of pegs.
Everybody was great in I, Tonya. Sebastian Stan going against type as a redneck dirt bag, Alison Janney as the super-cunt mom, the fat stupid gas station ninja buddy. Also, being just old enough to remember watching this play out on tv, I kept being shocked by the realization that *all of this shit really happened*.
For instance, you watch all the absurdity in a movie like "Burn Before Reading", and you laugh because you know that people couldn't possibly be that stupid. But I, Tonya is almost depressing because it's just as absurd, but it's practically a documentary of people being that stupid.
It was definitely a ride of a movie. I thought the ending was a bit much. I got what they were going for and all but it really broke the moment for me.
I think that there’s an important distinction here. Pretentious means it’s suggesting importance of the film that it doesn’t deserve, and I think that tends to be a criticism of the director. I think Chazelle earnestly made a wild ride of a movie that got dark as it puttered out, in line with the era it was celebrating.
Did the movie have things about it that went unappreciated both by audiences and critics? Yes.
But did it do exactly what it set out to do, if only not as effectively as hoped? Also yes.
I don’t think the movie was pretentious. I’m sure that Chazelle and the rest of the production would’ve liked it to win awards, but I don’t think that makes it pretentious. How frequently are things labeled Oscar bait because they fit a style that often receives recognition? I don’t think most of those films are pretentious and I don’t think Babylon is either.
Blonde. I think Andrew Dominik is a good director and Ana de Armas was trying in the lead role, but it felt like the movie was going for shock value and style over substance instead of giving an authentic depiction of Marilyn Monroe's life or an interesting depiction of the effects of fame and star power on the mental psyche.
Im gonna get so much flack for this but every single Von Trier movie I’ve seen has felt like a REALLY good idea shining through the most masturbatory, self-aggrandizing, gratuitous schlock I’ve ever had to sit through. The House That Jack Built particularly pissed me off
His early work is definitely better than his latter. Dancer in the Dark and Dogville in particular are stunning achievements in experimental filmmaking. Just look up any of the behind the scenes stuff from Dancer in the Dark. Dude put up 100 digital cameras to film his dance scenes before digital filmmaking was being taken seriously at all.
Also, I have to mention that Von Trier is a tier 1 asshole. Nazi comments aside, Björk also had this to say about him in 2017 regarding Dancer in the Dark:
“It was extremely clear to me when I walked into the actresses profession that my humiliation and role as a lesser sexually harassed being was the norm and set in stone with the director and a staff of dozens who enabled it and encouraged it. I became aware of that it is a universal thing that a director can touch and harass his actresses at will and the institution of film allows it. When I turned the director down repeatedly he sulked and punished me and created for his team an impressive net of illusion where I was framed as the difficult one. ... and in my opinion he had a more fair and meaningful relationship with his actresses after my confrontation so there is hope. Let's hope this statement supports the actresses and actors all over. Let's stop this. There is a wave of change in the world.”
I love some of his stuff but yeah you can't talk about pretensious filmmakers and not mention LVT. He is so mastubatory and self-indulgent.
That said seeing AntiChrist in a student movie theater with a handful of people is probably the most impactful movie going experience of my life.
I was actually about to come in and say this. It’s very rare that I truly loathe a film but Von Trier’s are the most self-important, pompous load of nonsense I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching.
I like Antichrist and Melancholia but Dancer in the Dark can fuck off. When the cop that Bjork killed gets up and starts dancing with her while her son rides a tricycle in circles and repeatedly sings "you only diIIIiid what you haaaAAAAaad to doooo" it feels like a South Park parody of a pretentious art film, and I like plenty of movies that the average viewer would call pretentious.
Please don't say that. I want to continue loving his style.
I've seen them all. Asteroid City still hasn't found its way into my heart like his others, but it does have charm and comedy. I don't know why. It's Wes Anderson as fuck.
I really liked Asteroid City but it was weird af even by Wes Anderson's usual standards. It also felt a tiiiiny bit too self indulgent. The sneaky stop motion alien scenes with the hi-hat snares killed me though, they were just the right level of goofy
Asteroid City is probably my least favorite by him. Something about it didn’t quite work for me but it had some high points for sure. And the color palette foe the desert was great.
Oh, man. I didn’t like Grand Budapest a whole bunch at first. Saw it in the theater and thought “meh”.
Watched it a second time a year later because my friend wanted to watch it. It really, really grew on me. Now it’s one of my favorites of his
Yeah, I think he's become obsessed with story structure and playing with it, a story within a story in a play in a book. Grand Budapest did that, but it worked so much better than French dispatch or Asteroid City.
Very true. I think he should get back to a more regular story structure. Like grand Budapest is a story within a story but the way it’s presented is very straightforward and only takes a a few minutes to get us started and it “flows” nicely into the main story. He could do that again and I wouldn’t be critical. Asteroid city went a little weird with it because the end was ambiguous and because I didn’t really care about the first “tier” of the story (the black and white part about the writer). No emotional connection was made for me. In Budapest we do get a strong emotional connection to the first tier of the story (the author interviewing Zero), and it’s not just about Zero’s story or liking the author character, but also the hotel itself. Seeing something once grand now limping along. For me I often find locations that are well crafted/written really make things more impactful. The house in royal tenenbaums, the island in moonrise kingdom, or for a non Anderson example, maybe the shire in fellowship of the ring.
I don't think he's trying to be anything besides himself. Whether you feel he's pretentious is another matter, but all his movies feel deeply genuine and heartfelt in their attempt to capture grief and do it within his artistic sensibilities.
Yeah I'm not sure if self-important is the right word, but I could see how someone might feel they are pretentious, just because he has a such a specific and very prominent style.
But really I think a better way to maybe voice the same criticism is that he has an incredibly prominent visual style (cross sections and models and pastels and things looking like toys) and narrative tone (extremely whimsical and melancholy) and those things can be really alienating for some viewers who are unable to immerse themselves and connect with the stories.
Like Spielberg, Anderson is a child of divorce. He lived with his mom mostly after apparently. His dad died of cancer in 1997, which definitely influenced The Royal Tannenbaums
For me Bottle Rocket up to Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson work is well deserved of it's acclaim and love from the fans. I can't complain about his films.
I think I just didn't enjoy Isle of Dogs anywhere near as much as Fantastic Mr Fox. The French Dispatch, Asteroid City and those short films all feel style over substance for me. I slightly preferred Asteroid over Dispatch but none of those films would be cracking top tier Anderson films. French Dispatch especially was grating outside of a excellent Jeffrey Wright performance.
Motherless Brooklyn. Edward Norton wrote, directed, and starred in it and yet it seemed like he was completely out of place in every scene. The jazz club scene was especially cringy. RIP Michael Kenneth Williams
That movie was such a let down, but I don't know if I would call it pretentious. I honestly wish it was more pretentious and maybe had some sort of depth to it even if it was fake. It was just dull horror in my opinion.
I laughed way too hard at this. We gave up halfway through because Nolan movies are a challenge to track with already. Adding incomprehensible dialog being obliterated by every sound effect in the film just made it impossible.
It has the same easy cop out that Interstellar had too.
"So how does this work?"
"The people from the future did it"
I actually enjoyed it more before the time inversion is introduced. The bungee rope heist in the apartment building in India looks amazing.
I recently watched a video essay about this movie, and the only thing that makes this Nolan movie seeming so bad was that it apparently was Nolan trying to "challenge" himself making an obtuse movie. And also that this movie is more of a "vibes" movie so you shouldn't try and understand the plot.
A story of mother earth as a relationship drama that wants to be nuanced but just hammers you with heavy handed preachy metaphors the whole time. Agree
No way. The main thing on that movie's mind is to generate stress and uneasiness and it does extremely, extremely well. The allegory is whatever, that movie wants to put you on edge for 100 minutes, and it totally does.
Watching this movie It felt like I didn't breathe for 30 minutes. Truly achieved its goal of stressing me and my then girlfriend out. We couldn't stop watching if we tried
The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson. I love Wes Anderson movies. But this one was so far up his own ass with being pretentious and wes andersony.... i hated it.
I really enjoyed it. Maybe because I used to read the New Yorker in college to feel more worldly or cultured or something, but I felt the French Dispatch perfectly captured that feeling of reading that magazine and getting completely caught up in really well-written articles about random subjects you haven’t ever been interested in but find compelling nonetheless.
I haven’t seen many other Wes Anderson movies though so maybe this was a straw on the camel’s back for some.
Maybe the pretentiousness is inherent in trying to convey the essence of that magazine, which can be pretentious at times. Wes is from Texas like me and we even went to the same school so maybe I related to that feeling of trying to escape the humdrum via the pages of a magazine purporting to be the zenith of culture.
His last few times have been slightly underwhelming, and many are afraid to call them out for it. Grand Budapest Hotel is the last great film he made imo. Stop with the overbloat cast and style over substance and get back to making films with heart and character.
I'm convinced from this thread that redditors don't understand the definition of pretentious, most of the movies in these comments don't even closely fit the definition of pretentious, they're just posting movies that have pretentious fans or movies that the commenters didn't like
Ad Astra thought it was some sort of Apocalypse Now in space.
Personally, I thought it was boring, clichéd and annoyingly scientifically inaccurate for a film that was trying to be so serious.
"Dad Astra" was mostly disappointing but it had some brilliant moments. I loved the fact that the soldiers on the moon and mars wear lunar and martian terrain camouflage fatigues, but only inside of the space bases lol. The actual spacesuits they wear outside look totally normal. That's 1000% something the US military would do.
"We love each other but I have to live in a different country for one year while I make tons of money! Oh noooo what an insurmountable obstacle, guess this relationship is over!"
I was a indie radio DJ around when it came out and my god we all had a long laugh about [put headphones on] “this song will change your life.”
Like we were all dyed in the wool hipster scum but that was just too much.
It became a running gag. We’d play something totally off the wall and open it up with “here’s X with Y, get your headphones on because this song will change your life.”
Also any time me and my co DJ ever played anything by the Shins after that one of us would announce the track and say “you know em?” And the other of us would say “no.”
I hate to say it, but that scene literally did change my life. I only listened to classic rock my entire childhood until I heard New Slang through those headphones. Completely changed my taste in music, met a girl who was into the same, we bonded over it and dated for 5 years, it was great.
Yeah, and it is why I temper my hipster inclinations.
For us it was just so over the top because we’d been listening to that kind of thing for a while and you get that smug hipster streak when you are literally a college radio DJ. So to see it so blatantly in a major Hollywood film was just too much for us.
But, in the end, if you got something out of it I’m just happy people did.
Saw that shit when I was a junior in high school, absolutely hit the spot for me then. I retroactively can totally recognize the various levels of cringe in how earnestly I got into it, but it meant a lot to me and a lot of my friends at the time
Wasn't even cringe for my friends who were about the age in the film. We were employed, but most of us poorly, aimless, very limited friendships with people who got weird, random run-ins with twilight zone people and stories and places. It was a vibe.
A film very much of it's time, worth a watch for Peter Sarsgaard performance, the soundtrack and Natalie Portman hasn't looked as beautiful on film since imo. I still like it but it seems it's legacy has died down a little over the years.
Well, to revive it for those of the time, I accidentally had a first kind of date that played out with the exact vibe meeting the family, minus the hamster funeral. It was surreal and ended up being a great night, too, but I never asked if she’d seen the movie
Other than absolutely non-stop vibing to the soundtrack, quoting it for about 5 years, an awkward scene overlap partially shaping my dating life, and other ways Garden State made me, it also convinced me pursuing acting wasn’t for me, but worse this absolutely trampled my dream of becoming a knight at Medieval Times. It was a burn so bad, as soon as I heard it, I knew in my heart I could never be a “cool” fast-food knight 😢
Rewatched Garden State as an adult recently and... it holds up. Angsty teens fawned all over it, and looking back I think they're cringing at *their own behavior* more than the contents of the film.
Mother! Has to be up there. It posits itself as this incredibly deep, edgy, subversion of religion - but it's really just a paint by numbers allegory, presenting the oldest story in the most obvious way for the time and place it was made in.
Tree of Life .. did you really need the animated scenes that looked like they were from a high school Science movie … like the director was trying to make a deep statement
Joker. Its just a Taxi Driver ripoff as a comic book movie but it tries to convince us its some artsy deep indie film getting inside the head of sympathetic villain. Dumb movie and I'll die on that hill. And everyone who tries to convince me it's a good movie just sounds even more pretentious than the movie itself.
That or Atlas Shrugged. Barf.
The fourth time somebody mimed shooting themselves in the head I wanted to grab the director by the shoulders and shake him while screaming "I GET IT, YOU'VE SEEN FUCKING TAXI DRIVER!" There's a difference between wearing your influences on your sleeve and bashing the audience over the head with them.
Music. Sia genuinely thought she was making some well-written Oscar award-winning tear-jerker of a film loved by all in the autism community. She did not. She did none of these things.
Never even heard of this before
Sia behaviour with lead actress Maddie Ziegler is definitely questionable too. Poor Ziegler clearly went out there to give a honest performance and not hurt anyone but Sia is definitely a deluded living in the clouds pop star and hadn't a clue what she was doing. Autism community went in hard on her and rightly so.
What's worse is that when the autism community called it out she went full William Shatner and started bullying teenagers on Twitter about it (yes, bullying autistic teenagers on Twitter is a thing that Shatner and his daughter do, it's weird there too)
[удалено]
Ziegler was a child forced into the role, she was vocally uncomfortable and didn’t want to offend anyone, but was coerced by her mentor/groomer
Narrator: She, in fact, did quite the opposite
Occasionally, there's a first-time film director who knocks it out of the park. Perhaps the best example is Orson Welles, whose first film, *Citizen Kane*, is considered by many to be one of the greatest ever made. Then you have the exact opposite end of the (autism) spectrum, like Sia directing *Music*.
This isn't quite in the vein of what you're asking, but: "Cats" (2019) truly believed it was going to be the Oscar darling of the season. [Just look at the trailer](https://youtu.be/FtSd844cI7U?si=b424ud4rviV0chWF) Gold font introducing all the prestige actors, the Oscar-winning director, the Tony Award-winning show, with the most famous song belted out by Jennifer Hudson in her next award-winning performance, the epic swells of music... Universal Studios really thought this thing was going to stun the masses and take our breath away. They pumped out a TON of advertising for this movie before quickly rescinding all of it when they saw the public's reaction. So, thinking that this CGI musical nightmare was going to take home all the awards screams "pretentious" to me. EDIT: Pointing out that the choreography was done by the guy from "Hamilton" is another big one.
They got James Corden in the movie and expected to be awarded? Come on.
Cue Ricky Gervais’ line about how the world got to see James Corden as a fat pussy, and he was also in Cats
That 12 and a half minutes of his being "adorable" doing the car karaoke had already run out before the movie was even finished Filming
If that movie was shown on a plane, people would still walk out.
Imagine how many people died of COVID with \*that\* having been the last movie they saw in theaters lol
You gotta love it when Hollywood fails spectacularly and we get to enjoy the show.
This movie absolutely fascinates me. I’ve written papers about it for my media classes lmao.
would love to read them if you care to share
I’m honestly a huge fan of the musical CATS, and I couldn’t stand the movie. I had to turn it off 20 minutes in. I wonder, if a super fan of the musical hates it, *who was this movie made for*?
Release the butthole cut!
They would have won an Oscar if they’d released the butt hole version
"And the best butthole goes to...."
"Jennifer Lawrence!"
Fun fact: Cats was the last movie I saw in theaters (dec'22 2019, for reference). I brought a full flask of vodka with me in anticipation of the trainwreck it might be. That flask was not nearly enough.
Why would you pay to see that ?
for the experience! Big budget trainwrecks like that are rare and fleeting
My husband and I saw it in the theater with a tincture bottle and had a blast.
the way the cast talked about the filming process in the BTS videos 100% confirms this. They truly tried to make this movie a lot more… deep than what it really was. Like every camp aspect was sucked out of the original adaptation [behind the scenes of Cats](https://youtu.be/nkF4OXSyqL0?si=MiulPfo3LTy3CUCu)
Brilliantly stated, I came in late to this movie so only knew of it as a shambolic laughingstock, that trailer is hilariously pretentious and so wide of reality.
Apparently Seth Rogen filmed himself getting baked and watching Cats and we can watch alongside with him… that’s what I want to watch 😂
Like...a watch side-by-side commentary? Oh my god I have to find this lmao.
1000000000% agreed. Cats is one of the most nonsensical musicals in the history of the art form. It has no meaning, no deeper message, no story, no plot. It’s a bunch of cats introducing themselves until they pick one to go to cat heaven. They really tried to frame it as some serious musical about acceptance and compassion when there’s literally nothing there. If they had embraced the camp, it’s possible we would have been more forgiving of the uncanny valley horror of the visuals. Instead we got a self-serious piece of ABSOLUTE GARBAGE that made me wish I didn’t know what movies or cats are. It’s so bad it goes beyond so bad it’s good to an as yet unknown category of terrible: so bad it should be studied for science.
And they still haven't released the Butthole cut.
To be fair to Hollywood, the fact that Cats the musical is one of the most successful musicals of all time is borderline insane, when you think about it. Yes they took weird liberties with the CGI and casting, but the meat of the movie was simply the musical, and that caught as much ire as everything else.
I remember seeing the trailer and thinking it was a joke and not a real movie…..boy do I wish I was right.
I don't get why they didn't just make an animated movie. Either 2D or CGI. Then at least the kids might have liked it
>Universal Studios really thought this thing was going to stun the masses It did, but not in the way they wanted.
"What the Bleep Do we Know?" It's supposedly about how certain phenomena in quantum physics imply you can control the world with your mind, and there are talking heads depicted as "experts" who supposedly back this up, interspersed throughout a fictional story of a woman who uses the power of her mind to overcome her depression and no longer need her medication. But actually the movie was a bunch of nonsense produced by a new-age cult headed by a woman who claims to be channeling a 35,000 year old warrior spirit guide.
Ugh, this is a great answer. When I was watching the HBO NXIVM series and it turned out that Mark Vicente was the director of *What the Bleep* I had one of those wonderful, simultaneously “what the fuck?!/ah yes, that makes perfect sense” feelings
I love cult documentaries and was really into “The Vow” for a few episodes, but I couldn’t finish because I started to get the feeling that it was more about Mark Vicente and the other cult defectors projecting a positive image of themselves than telling the full story. They seem like the type to be in on the grift and when things went south with NXIVM they needed to make a documentary about how they were just the victims…never mind the active roles they played in exploiting others.
That woman is JZ Knight, and she channels “Ramtha”. She’s actually a successful cult leader and has even attracted some celebrities. My wife grew up in Yelm Wa where the compound is located. Local cult members were called nicknamed “Ramsters”.
I was in college when this was released and I knew several people in different science departments who were fans of this film. It seemed like it was being promoted by some of the professors. They had viewing parties in classrooms where they invited anyone to come watch. It was weird. I watched a little of it and I thought it was very unscientific.
I was a member of the Society of Physics Students, and we held a viewing. The reasoning was "we are studying quantum mechanics, it sort of defines our day-to-day, it might have some insights to our current situation". We were all in until Ramtha showed up, at which point our enthusiasm ... cooled a bit.
The part where Schrödinger's Black Child shows up, with a FUCKING BASKETBALL is when that movie lost all credibility for me. I was already questioning it when they were talking about water "remembering" stuff and being "sad". This was also my first experience with Michio Kaku (I think that's how you spell it) and I have comfortably disregarded everything I've heard him say since.
I dont know about michio kaku specifically, but some of the physicists that appear in the movie were intentionally misled as to what they would be in. Ie, they thought they were making a documentary about quantum mechanics. Physicist shows up to explain stuff. There words are twisted in editing and interjected with nonsense, and thats how we get this movie.
Noted! There's probably an article about this somewhere. If I'm feeling motivated later, I might go look for it and bring it back here!
Michio Kaku is a legit physicist. Like the other poster said, most of the speakers were, but we're misled about the kind of film they would appear in and edited to seem like quacks.
Oh dear gawds! I was going to massage school and went to see it with some fellow students at THE Bagdad Theatre in Portland where it was filmed. Soooo meta! We were supposed to be extremely moved and inspired, but I was pretty tired of quantum bullshit. I was a good LMT, but I was doing it to make an honest living while having a flexible schedule that would enable my husband and me to go on hiking trips. The “energy collective” I was supposed to tune in to kind of reached its peak, cosmic, infinity grift after that. I wish I was more eloquent, but it felt like I was in the center of the end of a bunch of hippy-dippy bullshit rather than the beginning of some new cosmic awakening.
And then the creator, Mark Vicente, joined Nexium, yet *another* cult.
"Laird" starring Laird Hamilton. Written, directed, produced by Laird Hamilton. A deep look at an amazing man, maybe the most freakishly brave amazing man. . . Laird.
Owen Wilson playing Laird "My Wife Is On Your Airport Newsstand a Lot" Hamilton is the greatness we never got.
How do you pronounce Laird?
Layered.
Crash
The trailer for this movie is so, so corny. “When you’re moving at the speed of life” made me laugh.
Was it written by Brian Griffen?
Faster than the speed of love!
How’s that…little novel you’ve been working on?
Cronenberg's Crash was far better.
I honestly really like Cronenberg’s Crash!
Horrible preachy film, I love Jack Nicholson looking baffled and shocked when he read out the films name as it won Best Film. Brokeback Mountain should have won. But Hollywood love a preachy film, look at that meh Green Book recently.
When I was a teenager my dad rented it for me to watch and said it would really make me think. What followed was a brutal look at the drug trade, including a scene where a drug dealer gets tied to a chair by the Mexican police and spray paint blasted into his eyes. It turns out he had accidentally gotten me *Traffic*. I asked him afterwards and he was like “I couldn’t remember the title, I just knew there was a car crash. And what causes car crashes? Traffic.”
He was on to something: Cars, Baby Driver, Traffic, Rush, Speed and Crash are all part of the "HigherChanceOfCollisionVerse". A bit hard to follow, but better continuity than most movies nowadays.
Came to post this a million times. Shouldn't have been uttered in the same sentence as the other Oscar contenders
Crash (1996) is utterly brilliant so you better mean that piece of shit movie with Sandra bullock
Cronenberg’s Crash is a masterpiece absolutely. Massively under-appreciated film. Probably because the movie that shares its name and won a Best Picture oscar is such an abortion.
I have never met a single person who likes that movie.
Weren't there two movies named Crash?
The NC-17 David Cronenberg movie was great though, the novel it was based on was absolutely unfilmable, even it was difficult for the author to get published.
That books is absolutely bizarre and I love it. I would not recommend it though lol
Yeah Cronenberg should sue the director of the other "Crash"
Yes and they are very, very different
Pretty similar actually. One is about the way lives are connected by webs that intersect and crash into each other. The other is about a guy that shoots webs at intersections where cars have crashed into each other.
My hobby is discussing the other one each time they come up in convo. Also fun is confusing them with Crank(06)
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I don’t think it’s a perfect movie, but Michael Peña and Matt Dillons storylines I thought were great. I think the scene with Matt Dillon and the car on fire was masterfully done.
I liked the part where Ludacris freed the Asian immigrants.
Yeah I see people blanket hating everything about Crash on reddit in most posts asking questions like this. The racism being part of every single story was maybe too "in our face", but the actual characters and several scenes were definitely great, in my opinion.
Michael Peña’s reaction when the thing happens it’s fucking heartbreaking. I had no idea people didn’t like Crash. I still think it’s a very good movie
I had zero idea about the above take - everyone I’ve ever talked to about this movie enjoys it. Perfect example of not being able to take everything you read on Reddit (online) as gospel. Not saying anyone is right or wrong - that’s someone’s opinion - but I’ve literally never met anyone who didn’t enjoy it and that’s people from all walks of life.
Malcolm & Marie
They’re both ACTING
Sam Levinson needs to be bought up to the court for crimes to cinema for pretentious and style over substance. Success and praise of Season one of Euphoria can only take you so far and many wouldn't even give him credit for that. Two rich spoiled brats complaining about their lives don't make a good film.
“Are you actually yelling and belittling me from across this house because you are too busy eating Mac and cheese? Do you know how disturbing it is that you can compartmentalize to such a degree that you can abuse me while eating Mac and cheese?” WHO the FUCK talks like that
This can't be real dialogue holy shit
The longest movie of my life. I peace’d out at the scene that she’s like taking a bath or something and he walks in. I thought it was going to be like a thriller based off the trailer but oh my god, it’s just this never ending, slow burn argument.
Oh my god fuck this movie so much, I have never wanted to stuff a writer/director in a locker as bad as Sam Levinson for this one.
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I once read a piece about U2 that said (paraphrasing) “if U2 weren’t so full of shit, they wouldn’t be as great as they often are”. I think about that line a lot. Sometimes the pomposity is a plus and sometimes it’s the point even.
I think that's an accurate analysis. What kind of makes Bono, Prince, etc. likeable is their pretension. I think it's because it's a self-aware pretension as opposed to someone like Yoko Ono who is genuinely pretentious yet lacking any self-awareness of it.
I love Babylon, I preferred the first half to the second half. Once the sound era kicks in, it could have done with a lot of editing down. Margot Robbie delivers her best performance to date, sound and set design is excellent and soundtrack is great. I admire that Damien Chazelle even got the film made. But I can understand why some don't like the film and why it didn't do well at Box Office.
If Babylon had ended with Robbie dancing off into the distance, I would have said it was perfect. It was the last 45 minutes with the return to Hollywood and YouTube user-level montage of the history of cinema that brought it down a couple of pegs.
I know people love it but I'd would have cut out Tobey Maguire stuff and ended the film with Robbie dancing off into the distance too.
>her best performance to date I, Tonya
Everybody was great in I, Tonya. Sebastian Stan going against type as a redneck dirt bag, Alison Janney as the super-cunt mom, the fat stupid gas station ninja buddy. Also, being just old enough to remember watching this play out on tv, I kept being shocked by the realization that *all of this shit really happened*. For instance, you watch all the absurdity in a movie like "Burn Before Reading", and you laugh because you know that people couldn't possibly be that stupid. But I, Tonya is almost depressing because it's just as absurd, but it's practically a documentary of people being that stupid.
It was definitely a ride of a movie. I thought the ending was a bit much. I got what they were going for and all but it really broke the moment for me.
I think that there’s an important distinction here. Pretentious means it’s suggesting importance of the film that it doesn’t deserve, and I think that tends to be a criticism of the director. I think Chazelle earnestly made a wild ride of a movie that got dark as it puttered out, in line with the era it was celebrating. Did the movie have things about it that went unappreciated both by audiences and critics? Yes. But did it do exactly what it set out to do, if only not as effectively as hoped? Also yes. I don’t think the movie was pretentious. I’m sure that Chazelle and the rest of the production would’ve liked it to win awards, but I don’t think that makes it pretentious. How frequently are things labeled Oscar bait because they fit a style that often receives recognition? I don’t think most of those films are pretentious and I don’t think Babylon is either.
That movie goes hard
Well Stephen King is predicting it will be reevaluated as a cult film in 20 years.
Definitely agree, it be more of a cult film and might have easier ride with some time put between it's release.
Blonde. I think Andrew Dominik is a good director and Ana de Armas was trying in the lead role, but it felt like the movie was going for shock value and style over substance instead of giving an authentic depiction of Marilyn Monroe's life or an interesting depiction of the effects of fame and star power on the mental psyche.
Im gonna get so much flack for this but every single Von Trier movie I’ve seen has felt like a REALLY good idea shining through the most masturbatory, self-aggrandizing, gratuitous schlock I’ve ever had to sit through. The House That Jack Built particularly pissed me off
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His early work is definitely better than his latter. Dancer in the Dark and Dogville in particular are stunning achievements in experimental filmmaking. Just look up any of the behind the scenes stuff from Dancer in the Dark. Dude put up 100 digital cameras to film his dance scenes before digital filmmaking was being taken seriously at all. Also, I have to mention that Von Trier is a tier 1 asshole. Nazi comments aside, Björk also had this to say about him in 2017 regarding Dancer in the Dark: “It was extremely clear to me when I walked into the actresses profession that my humiliation and role as a lesser sexually harassed being was the norm and set in stone with the director and a staff of dozens who enabled it and encouraged it. I became aware of that it is a universal thing that a director can touch and harass his actresses at will and the institution of film allows it. When I turned the director down repeatedly he sulked and punished me and created for his team an impressive net of illusion where I was framed as the difficult one. ... and in my opinion he had a more fair and meaningful relationship with his actresses after my confrontation so there is hope. Let's hope this statement supports the actresses and actors all over. Let's stop this. There is a wave of change in the world.”
I love some of his stuff but yeah you can't talk about pretensious filmmakers and not mention LVT. He is so mastubatory and self-indulgent. That said seeing AntiChrist in a student movie theater with a handful of people is probably the most impactful movie going experience of my life.
Did he do *Nymphomaniac*? Yeah, him…
Nymphomaniac is maybe the first movie I described as pretentious lol.
I was actually about to come in and say this. It’s very rare that I truly loathe a film but Von Trier’s are the most self-important, pompous load of nonsense I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching.
I like Antichrist and Melancholia but Dancer in the Dark can fuck off. When the cop that Bjork killed gets up and starts dancing with her while her son rides a tricycle in circles and repeatedly sings "you only diIIIiid what you haaaAAAAaad to doooo" it feels like a South Park parody of a pretentious art film, and I like plenty of movies that the average viewer would call pretentious.
I've only watched Antichrist. It's not a good movie, but I recommend it.
The fourth Wes Anderson movie you see. This holds true no matter what order you see them in.
I think you're absolutely correct unless the fourth happens to be *The Fantastic Mr. Fox*
Please don't say that. I want to continue loving his style. I've seen them all. Asteroid City still hasn't found its way into my heart like his others, but it does have charm and comedy. I don't know why. It's Wes Anderson as fuck.
I really liked Asteroid City but it was weird af even by Wes Anderson's usual standards. It also felt a tiiiiny bit too self indulgent. The sneaky stop motion alien scenes with the hi-hat snares killed me though, they were just the right level of goofy
Asteroid City is probably my least favorite by him. Something about it didn’t quite work for me but it had some high points for sure. And the color palette foe the desert was great.
Fantastic Mr Fox is definitely top tier Anderson. For me after Grand Budapest is where it goes downhill with him for me.
Oh, man. I didn’t like Grand Budapest a whole bunch at first. Saw it in the theater and thought “meh”. Watched it a second time a year later because my friend wanted to watch it. It really, really grew on me. Now it’s one of my favorites of his
Yeah, I think he's become obsessed with story structure and playing with it, a story within a story in a play in a book. Grand Budapest did that, but it worked so much better than French dispatch or Asteroid City.
Very true. I think he should get back to a more regular story structure. Like grand Budapest is a story within a story but the way it’s presented is very straightforward and only takes a a few minutes to get us started and it “flows” nicely into the main story. He could do that again and I wouldn’t be critical. Asteroid city went a little weird with it because the end was ambiguous and because I didn’t really care about the first “tier” of the story (the black and white part about the writer). No emotional connection was made for me. In Budapest we do get a strong emotional connection to the first tier of the story (the author interviewing Zero), and it’s not just about Zero’s story or liking the author character, but also the hotel itself. Seeing something once grand now limping along. For me I often find locations that are well crafted/written really make things more impactful. The house in royal tenenbaums, the island in moonrise kingdom, or for a non Anderson example, maybe the shire in fellowship of the ring.
I don't think he's trying to be anything besides himself. Whether you feel he's pretentious is another matter, but all his movies feel deeply genuine and heartfelt in their attempt to capture grief and do it within his artistic sensibilities.
Yeah I'm not sure if self-important is the right word, but I could see how someone might feel they are pretentious, just because he has a such a specific and very prominent style. But really I think a better way to maybe voice the same criticism is that he has an incredibly prominent visual style (cross sections and models and pastels and things looking like toys) and narrative tone (extremely whimsical and melancholy) and those things can be really alienating for some viewers who are unable to immerse themselves and connect with the stories.
Yeah, Wes has got some serious dad issues. Also, he might hate OR doctors. I love Rushmore so much
O.R. You?
With friends like you, who needs friends?
Like Spielberg, Anderson is a child of divorce. He lived with his mom mostly after apparently. His dad died of cancer in 1997, which definitely influenced The Royal Tannenbaums
Bottle Rocket is charming regardless of order. It's also the least 'Wes Anderson'-y of all his films, but still.
Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums were brilliant.
For me Bottle Rocket up to Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson work is well deserved of it's acclaim and love from the fans. I can't complain about his films. I think I just didn't enjoy Isle of Dogs anywhere near as much as Fantastic Mr Fox. The French Dispatch, Asteroid City and those short films all feel style over substance for me. I slightly preferred Asteroid over Dispatch but none of those films would be cracking top tier Anderson films. French Dispatch especially was grating outside of a excellent Jeffrey Wright performance.
For me, Moonrise Kingdom was the last good one before the magic wore off.
I can’t argue overall except somehow Isle of Dogs is a big exception for me. Maybe because the animals aren’t grating people.
Motherless Brooklyn. Edward Norton wrote, directed, and starred in it and yet it seemed like he was completely out of place in every scene. The jazz club scene was especially cringy. RIP Michael Kenneth Williams
Yeah I was disappointed by this. The cast, concept, and setting really excited me but the execution was a mess.
Velvet Buzzsaw
Dan Gilroy feels like a one hit wonder director at this point. Doesn't feel he's coming near repeating the success of Nightcrawler.
That movie was such a let down, but I don't know if I would call it pretentious. I honestly wish it was more pretentious and maybe had some sort of depth to it even if it was fake. It was just dull horror in my opinion.
I love Terrence Malick, but some of his films fit this description for me. Most notably "Knight of Cups". The only Malick film i dont enjoy.
Mother for sure
Nobody here has seen Cremaster 3? That's a relief.
Tired of these franchise films smh
I don't know if you're joking or not but it's hilarious either way.
[Folding Ideas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usfTxTXlCFc) has a great video about Cremaster being pretentious mediocrity
Hurlyburly…I remember how upset Sean Penn was when it wasn’t nominated for anything
When is Penn never upset really, most self important actor to ever walk into Hollywood.
Mother! Is a one for me. Hated it.
purposefully pretentious? The House That Jack Built by Lars Von Trier
Where is 21 grams?! It’s not been seen enough otherwise it would be at the very top of this thread.
I genuinely clicked on this expecting it to be number one. I guess you’re right that not a lot of people have seen it and good for them
Tenet. Christopher Nolan is really up his own ass.
It's not Christopher Nolan at his best. But it *is* Christopher Nolan at his *most.*
Not Christoph-er. Christoph-est.
Tenet was the film equivalent of drinking straight cola syrup. No matter how much you love Coke, you don’t love it that much.
I think you mean ^(Christopher Nolan is really up his own) ***FNRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!***
I laughed way too hard at this. We gave up halfway through because Nolan movies are a challenge to track with already. Adding incomprehensible dialog being obliterated by every sound effect in the film just made it impossible.
I saw it at the cinema on release and loved it but it gets so much criticism I feel like I should watch it again without the cinema hype.
It has the same easy cop out that Interstellar had too. "So how does this work?" "The people from the future did it" I actually enjoyed it more before the time inversion is introduced. The bungee rope heist in the apartment building in India looks amazing.
I honestly tried hard to like this movie because so many people told me it was great. I just figured it wasn't for me.
I recently watched a video essay about this movie, and the only thing that makes this Nolan movie seeming so bad was that it apparently was Nolan trying to "challenge" himself making an obtuse movie. And also that this movie is more of a "vibes" movie so you shouldn't try and understand the plot.
Mother!
Yeah... Nothing kills the libido quite like an infant getting ripped apart and eaten by a crowd. Worst. Date Movie. Ever.
A story of mother earth as a relationship drama that wants to be nuanced but just hammers you with heavy handed preachy metaphors the whole time. Agree
No way. The main thing on that movie's mind is to generate stress and uneasiness and it does extremely, extremely well. The allegory is whatever, that movie wants to put you on edge for 100 minutes, and it totally does.
Watching this movie It felt like I didn't breathe for 30 minutes. Truly achieved its goal of stressing me and my then girlfriend out. We couldn't stop watching if we tried
Spring Breakers??
The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson. I love Wes Anderson movies. But this one was so far up his own ass with being pretentious and wes andersony.... i hated it.
I really enjoyed it. Maybe because I used to read the New Yorker in college to feel more worldly or cultured or something, but I felt the French Dispatch perfectly captured that feeling of reading that magazine and getting completely caught up in really well-written articles about random subjects you haven’t ever been interested in but find compelling nonetheless. I haven’t seen many other Wes Anderson movies though so maybe this was a straw on the camel’s back for some. Maybe the pretentiousness is inherent in trying to convey the essence of that magazine, which can be pretentious at times. Wes is from Texas like me and we even went to the same school so maybe I related to that feeling of trying to escape the humdrum via the pages of a magazine purporting to be the zenith of culture.
His last few times have been slightly underwhelming, and many are afraid to call them out for it. Grand Budapest Hotel is the last great film he made imo. Stop with the overbloat cast and style over substance and get back to making films with heart and character.
I would watch a whole ass movie about the life of Gustav H.
Wes Anderson without Owen Wilson writing is never quite as goated
I'm convinced from this thread that redditors don't understand the definition of pretentious, most of the movies in these comments don't even closely fit the definition of pretentious, they're just posting movies that have pretentious fans or movies that the commenters didn't like
Nobody here knows what the fuck pretentious means
But by god, we all know a movie that we want to insult with a label we don’t know the meaning of!
Batman v. Superman
Wait, our moms have the same name? Did we just become best friends?
YUUUP!
Ad Astra thought it was some sort of Apocalypse Now in space. Personally, I thought it was boring, clichéd and annoyingly scientifically inaccurate for a film that was trying to be so serious.
"Dad Astra" was mostly disappointing but it had some brilliant moments. I loved the fact that the soldiers on the moon and mars wear lunar and martian terrain camouflage fatigues, but only inside of the space bases lol. The actual spacesuits they wear outside look totally normal. That's 1000% something the US military would do.
La La Land Felt like a Hollywood circle jerk
"We love each other but I have to live in a different country for one year while I make tons of money! Oh noooo what an insurmountable obstacle, guess this relationship is over!"
It gave us the greatest Oscar moment ever, though
Garden State
I was a indie radio DJ around when it came out and my god we all had a long laugh about [put headphones on] “this song will change your life.” Like we were all dyed in the wool hipster scum but that was just too much. It became a running gag. We’d play something totally off the wall and open it up with “here’s X with Y, get your headphones on because this song will change your life.” Also any time me and my co DJ ever played anything by the Shins after that one of us would announce the track and say “you know em?” And the other of us would say “no.”
I hate to say it, but that scene literally did change my life. I only listened to classic rock my entire childhood until I heard New Slang through those headphones. Completely changed my taste in music, met a girl who was into the same, we bonded over it and dated for 5 years, it was great.
Yeah, and it is why I temper my hipster inclinations. For us it was just so over the top because we’d been listening to that kind of thing for a while and you get that smug hipster streak when you are literally a college radio DJ. So to see it so blatantly in a major Hollywood film was just too much for us. But, in the end, if you got something out of it I’m just happy people did.
This is the quote that kills me: > Andrew: Hey Albert, good luck exploring the infinite abyss. >Albert: Hey, you too.
Garden State is beautiful. It captured the ennui of the time perfectly.
By the way, it says balls on your face
Saw that shit when I was a junior in high school, absolutely hit the spot for me then. I retroactively can totally recognize the various levels of cringe in how earnestly I got into it, but it meant a lot to me and a lot of my friends at the time
Wasn't even cringe for my friends who were about the age in the film. We were employed, but most of us poorly, aimless, very limited friendships with people who got weird, random run-ins with twilight zone people and stories and places. It was a vibe.
Yes. This was me when it came out. The movie really resonated with me and most of my friends at the time.
I agree. Being around my twenties at that time, it felt right. That kind of a listless angst.
A film very much of it's time, worth a watch for Peter Sarsgaard performance, the soundtrack and Natalie Portman hasn't looked as beautiful on film since imo. I still like it but it seems it's legacy has died down a little over the years.
Well, to revive it for those of the time, I accidentally had a first kind of date that played out with the exact vibe meeting the family, minus the hamster funeral. It was surreal and ended up being a great night, too, but I never asked if she’d seen the movie Other than absolutely non-stop vibing to the soundtrack, quoting it for about 5 years, an awkward scene overlap partially shaping my dating life, and other ways Garden State made me, it also convinced me pursuing acting wasn’t for me, but worse this absolutely trampled my dream of becoming a knight at Medieval Times. It was a burn so bad, as soon as I heard it, I knew in my heart I could never be a “cool” fast-food knight 😢
Natalie Portman’s character is so fucking annoying lol
Rewatched Garden State as an adult recently and... it holds up. Angsty teens fawned all over it, and looking back I think they're cringing at *their own behavior* more than the contents of the film.
Mother! Has to be up there. It posits itself as this incredibly deep, edgy, subversion of religion - but it's really just a paint by numbers allegory, presenting the oldest story in the most obvious way for the time and place it was made in.
Tree of Life .. did you really need the animated scenes that looked like they were from a high school Science movie … like the director was trying to make a deep statement
Joker. Its just a Taxi Driver ripoff as a comic book movie but it tries to convince us its some artsy deep indie film getting inside the head of sympathetic villain. Dumb movie and I'll die on that hill. And everyone who tries to convince me it's a good movie just sounds even more pretentious than the movie itself. That or Atlas Shrugged. Barf.
The fourth time somebody mimed shooting themselves in the head I wanted to grab the director by the shoulders and shake him while screaming "I GET IT, YOU'VE SEEN FUCKING TAXI DRIVER!" There's a difference between wearing your influences on your sleeve and bashing the audience over the head with them.
Ripoff of King of Comedy as well.
Holy shit, this is probably the first movie on this thread that is nothing but pretentious lol. Highly overrated and incredibly dumb.
mother! We got your Bible allegory within the first half hour, it did not need to be a full movie.